1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to lysophospholipids with water solubility, and more particularly, to desired lysophospholipids composition with water solubility including lysophosphatidylethanolamine (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cLPExe2x80x9d), lysophosphatidylinositol (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cLPIxe2x80x9d) and lysophosphatidylcholine (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cLPCxe2x80x9d).
Other than said LPE, LPI and LPC, known are different kinds of lysophospholipids such as lysophosphatidylglycerol (LPG), lysophosphatidylserine (LPS) and/or lysophosphatidylic acid (LPA). However, the present invention is directed to provide a lysophospholipids composition having excellent water-solubility enabling to easily apply it to various applications simultaneously with improved anti-aging effects of plants including fruits and animals by comprising desired contents of LPE, LPI and LPC in the composition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, LPE among the lysophospholipids composition is known to substantially serve for the ripening and/or aging of fruits. For instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,220,341 and 5,126,155 disclose that LPE inhibits the aging of leaves and fruits of tomato and also extends the storage time of tomato after harvesting.
The aging inhibition effect of LPE is usually accomplished by controlling the reaction of phospholipase D which is well known as an important enzyme to intermediate the degeneration of membrane phospholipids at the initial step of the aging process of plants. It is also known that said functional effect of LPE to phospholipase D varies depending on amounts used thereof, and usually increases in proportion to length of acyl chains contained in LPE and/or amount of unsaturated parts.
As described above, the inhibition effect of phospholipase D by lysophospholipids, resulting in the anti-aging inhibition effect is most excellent for LPE, though it gradually decreases for LPI and LPC in series so that LPC shows only a slight activity to inhibit the phospholipase D. Whereas it is found that LPG, LPS and LPA affect opposite to the effects of said LPE, LPI and LPC and the extent of the opposite effect is enlarged in their order. For example, LPA cannot inhibit the generation of phospholipase D, rather, it accelerates said generation to lead no activity to inhibit the aging of plants. (See Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol.94, pp12717-12721, November 1997 Plant Biology which is incorporated for reference).
According to a result of studying as described above, in order to obtain anti-aging property, only LPE will be preferably used. However, since it is difficult to obtain LPE by isolation and purification thereof, in addition to, LPE itself is not water-soluble, it still has a problem not to preferably apply to plants and animals.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a lysophospholipids composition with water solubility comprising LPI and LPC in addition to LPE, wherein the LPI and LPC have subsidiary effects for the inhibition of aging, and the overall composition is water-soluble, thereby the composition is capable of removing the above described drawback induced by the water-insoluble property of LPE when it is only employed as lysophospholipid having excellent efficiency to inhibit aging process so that the lysophospholipids composition can be efficiently and easily applied to plants and animals.
To achieve the above object, there is provided a water-soluble composition, particularly, a lysophospholipids composition with water solubility including LPE and LPC, in which the content of LPC is ranged of 20 to 60% by weight if the content of LPE is 0.1 to 5% by weight based on total weight of water.
Furthermore, there is preferably provided another lysophospholipids composition with water solubility comprising LPE, LPC and LPI, in which LPC, LPI and LPE are contained in the amounts of 10-50, 10-50 and 40-60% by weight, respectively, if the content of LPE is over 0.5% by weight and less than 2% by weight based on the weight of water.
There is also provided alternative lysophospholipids composition with water solubility comprising LPE, LPC and LPI, in which LPC, LPI and LPE are contained in the amounts of 10-70, 10-70 and more than 20% by weight, respectively, if the content of LPE is over 0.1% by weight and less than 1% by weight based on the weight of water.
Finally, there is further provided a lysophospholipids composition with water solubility comprising LPE, LPC and LPI, in which LPC and LPI are contained in the amounts of 10-90% and 10-90% by weight, respectively, if the content of LPE is less than 0.1% by weight based on the weight of water.
The respective lysophospholipid components forming the lysophospholipids composition with water solubility according to the present invention may include natural materials, processed one from the natural materials by means of isolation and purification processes and/or artificially synthesized one.
Said natural material itself and/or separated and purified one from the natural material include, for example, soybean phospholipids and yolk phospholipids.